1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of liquid misting or spraying systems, and more particularly to the field of automatic liquid misting systems having a variety of uses including the application of a fine water mist to food products in display counters, cooling of people at outdoor events, cooling of livestock, and humidification of green houses, warehouses, production facilities, and storage rooms.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the invention relates to the application of a fine mist to food produces, in order to maintain a fresh and desirable appearance of produce foods in a grocery store, certain produce must be kept sufficiently moist and cool. Otherwise, the produce will dehydrate, resulting in a reduced shelf life and an unattractive appearance giving reduced salability. The amount of moisture typically used to maintain proper hydration must be carefully controlled or else the quality of the produce can be adversely affected. It has long been the custom to spray the produce with a fine mist to retain the moisture in the produce and prevent drying of the produce. Earlier forms of spraying of produce took the form of a spray hose that was utilized manually to spray the produce on a counter. It has now become well known to utilize a permanent spraying system installed in a produce case with the spraying system including a plurality of nozzles spaced along the case, and usually including a time clock or the like to provide automatic misting of the produce.
Although, there are many existing systems that create mist and/or humidify the air, numerous problems or disadvantages are apparent throughout the known systems. Many systems have the problem of relatively large water droplets spraying from the heads of the nozzles, and such large droplets are a nuisance for shoppers and get products overly wet, or do not evaporate fast enough in evaporative cooling operations. Of the systems that attempt to minimize the large droplets, most create a very fine mist using high water pressure. In other systems, air and water are separately injected through separate ports into the same nozzle where they are expelled together to obtain a fine mist output. Other prior art systems make use of discriminators to create fine mists. Discriminators are mounted at the nozzle of spraying systems and deflect the liquid flowing out of the nozzle to create a fine mist consisting of smaller water droplets. However, a large percentage of the liquid does not spray outwardly into a mist over the food, flowers (or other products), but rather, strikes the discriminator and is partially deflected and wasted as the water falls in the form of a liquid stream or as large droplets. It would thus be a value to the industry to improve upon each of these prior systems.